Toxic

Michele and Russell Poland's credit was shot, but they managed to buy their suburban dream home anyway. After a business bankruptcy and a home foreclosure, they turned to a rare option in this era of tightfisted banking - a subprime loan. The Polands paid nearly $10,000 in upfront fees for the privilege of securing a mortgage at 10.9% interest. And they had to raid their retirement account for a 35% down payment. Most borrowers would balk at such stiff terms. But with prices rising, the Polands wanted to snag a four-bedroom home in Temecula near top-rated schools for their 5-year-old son. By later this year, they figure, they'll be able to refinance into a standard loan.

At age 19, when I was an assistant scoutmaster, I was expelled from the Boy Scouts of America for being gay. The very group that had taught me the value of self-respect since I was 8 years old now told me that there was something fundamentally wrong with who I was, and am. Confronting institutional discrimination for the first time, I was overwhelmed with sadness, grief and anger. On Thursday, under the guise of progress, the Boy Scouts' National Council appears poised to endorse a compromise that will allow gay young people as Scouts but would continue to bar gay adults from any participation in Scouting.

In a sign of diminished confidence in BP's ability to manage the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, federal officials Monday said they intended to require the company to dramatically scale back its use of oil dispersants and would initiate their own tests on the chemicals' effect on sea life. With an oil spill of epic proportions looming offshore, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson — along with angry chorus of lawmakers — chided BP for its lack of transparency.

A bill before the California Assembly would outlaw the use of lead ammunition by hunters. There is already a federal prohibition on its use in hunting waterfowl, and in 2007 the state banned it in the range of the endangered California condor. AB 711, written by Assemblymen Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) and Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), would take these restrictions a step further in an effort to safeguard animals as well as the environment. Lead pellets in shotgun shells, typically used to shoot birds, spray across land and water.

Re "Bank plan lifts the market," March 24 Scott Talbott, chief lobbyist of the trade group Financial Services Roundtable, is quoted as saying that the assets are toxic not "because they have no value; they're simply toxic because they have no market, and because there is no market we don't know what the price is." Does that mean the government will be willing to purchase my collection of collectible Elvis plates? Jim Endsley Lakewood -- So Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner "detailed the administration's innovative but untested plan for the government to invest alongside private firms to buy as much as $1 trillion of the troubled assets clogging the balance sheets of financial institutions."

Solano County authorities evacuated dozens of residents within a half mile of a barn holding 70,000 gallons of illegally stored toxic chemicals, including explosives. The materials, many stored in leaky containers, were found by the state Department of Food and Agriculture, acting on a tip, at a rural site north of the Sacramento River between Sacramento and San Francisco. Investigators found chemicals used in munitions that had been stored in the barn in drums since 1981. Deputy Dist.

A controversial $40-billion government program to buy toxic securities from ailing banks has a flaw that law enforcement and financial experts say could allow traders to illegally profit from inside information. Critics of the program say that without adequate safeguards, traders could use the tens of billions of dollars provided by the government to manipulate prices and exploit the price swings in other trades. Because the government is providing 75% of the program's money -- $30 billion -- the manipulations could lead to significant losses by taxpayers.

If the toxic blaze that drew emergency crews from three counties to a Saticoy chemical plant last week had occurred 10 years ago, firefighters might have treated it as just another routine call. The 1,500 residents sent fleeing for shelter probably would have been allowed to stay put. The two fire trucks that were left at the site for three days while they were checked for poisonous residue probably would have been driven off. And the charred and potentially contaminated debris being studied by scientists probably would have ended up in a trash dumpster.

"Ancestral Diet Gone Toxic" (Jan. 13) reports that Greenland's Inuit tribes contain levels of toxic chemicals in their bodies so high that some human tissues could be classified as hazardous waste. This should serve as a wake-up call to the public and policymakers in California, where billions of pounds of industrial chemicals and pesticides are released each year. Recently, the University of California and state health agencies tested blood and fat tissue samples of women living in California for toxic flame retardants, called polybrominated diphenyl ethers, and found them to be among the highest in the world.

Residents of five communities in Queensland took part in the inaugural Toad Day Out event, killing thousands of poisonous cane toads amid a festive mood. The toads can grow as long as 8 inches. They were imported from South America to Queensland in 1935 in a failed attempt to control beetles on sugar cane plantations. But the toads couldn't jump high enough to eat the beetles, which live on top of cane stalks. The toads bred rapidly, and they now threaten many local species. They spread diseases, such as salmonella, and produce highly toxic venom.

The chief deputy director of the state Department of Toxic Substances Control has stepped down from her position and plans to retire at the end of the year, officials said Monday. Odette Madriago, the No. 2 official at the agency, had been a target for consumer activists who alleged earlier this year that she had a conflict of interest because she had investments in companies-- such as Chevron -- that the agency regulates. In April, the state ethics agency, the Fair Political Practices Commission, launched a formal probe, which is still ongoing.

Gregg Renfrew wants to change the way people live, starting with their cosmetics. Sitting in her light-filled office in Santa Monica, Renfrew rattles off the statistics she finds most alarming when it comes to some of the lotions, sprays and powders we apply to our bodies on a daily basis. "Did you know that there has not been a federal law passed since 1938 governing the cosmetics industry? And there are close to 12,000 ingredients used in all personal care products, from toothpaste to shampoo, lipstick to lotion, 80% of which have never been tested for safety on human health.

SACRAMENTO - Responding to complaints from businesses, Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing an overhaul of California's 26-year-old landmark clean water and anti-toxins law that he said is being misused by "unscrupulous lawyers" filing lawsuits. At issue is the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, or Proposition 65, approved by voters in 1986. It requires product manufacturers, retailers and property owners to post signs warning the public if goods or premises contain chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer or birth defects.

State regulators took the highly unusual step Wednesday of suspending operations at a Vernon battery recycler that has discharged harmful quantities of lead for years and more recently has been deemed to pose a danger to as many as 110,000 people because of arsenic emissions. The state Department of Toxic Substances Control said its order came after officials learned this spring that Exide Technologies, one of the largest car battery recyclers in the world, had been continuously releasing hazardous waste into the soil beneath its plant because of a degraded pipeline.

Officials closed off part of Angeles Crest Highway on Wednesday after a man apparently took his own life by mixing chemicals to create a toxic substance. An adult man's body was found in a vehicle around 10 a.m. Wednesday near mile marker 39.31 of Angeles Crest Highway, said Lt. Angela Shepherd of the Crescenta Valley Sheriff's Station. The location where his vehicle was found is about 15 miles north of the 210 Freeway in La Cañada Flintridge.  Officials believe the man mixed chemicals to create a poison, she said, and forest roads are closed as a precaution.

Authorities dealing with a huge explosion at a fertilizer plant near Waco, Texas, were preparing for a possible shift in the winds that could push toxic clouds toward areas not yet affected by the disaster, officials said early Thursday. At least three people were reportedly killed, dozens of others were injured and about six firefighters were missing after the massive blast and huge fireball tore through the West Fertilizer facility in West, about 20 miles north of Waco.  A huge plume  of smoke -- laden with toxic anhydrous ammonia --  was visible for miles and was being pushed by winds blowing from the south, officials said.

The owner of the former Franciscan Ceramics manufacturing plant in Atwater hopes to begin work within two weeks to clean up asbestos, lead, zinc and other toxic deposits on the 45-acre site that he plans to develop into a shopping center. Meantime, officials of the Los Angeles Unified School District said this week that they are also looking at the property as a potential site for a new high school. They could acquire the property through eminent domain proceedings. Bob Niccum, district director of real estate, said he will ask the Board of Education on Monday to authorize a formal study of a proposal to purchase the Franciscan site to build a school to relieve overcrowding at Belmont, Marshall and Eagle Rock high schools.

More than 60 years after scientists assembled the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, lethal waste is seeping from mountain burial sites and moving toward aquifers, springs and streams that provide water to 250,000 residents of northern New Mexico. Isolated on a high plateau, the Los Alamos National Laboratory seemed an ideal place to store a bomb factory's deadly debris. But the heavily fractured mountains haven't contained the waste, some of which has trickled down hundreds of feet to the edge of the Rio Grande, one of the most important water sources in the Southwest.

A toxic waste dump near the San Joaquin Valley farming community of Kettleman City has agreed to pay $311,000 in fines for failing to report 72 hazardous materials spills over the last four years, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control announced Wednesday. Brian Johnson, the department's deputy director of enforcement, described the fines as "a substantial and aggressive penalty. " The penalties were part of a settlement that capped an investigation into the Chemical Waste Management facility, the only one in California licensed to accept polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a carcinogen.

Two state senators have called for an investigation into the state agency responsible for protecting people and the environment from hazardous chemicals after a consumer group released a report Thursday criticizing the agency for failing to do its job. Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog has accused the Department of Toxic Substances Control, which is responsible for managing hazardous waste, of allowing polluters to operate on expired permits for...